With the Colorado Avalanche‘s stunning sweep at the hands of the Vegas Golden Knights in the Western Conference Finals, it marks another year of futility for the team with the league’s most points during the regular season.
While the Presidents’ Trophy winners at one point were a good bet to earn the Stanley Cup as well – 6 of the first 19 winners won the trophy, and another 2 reached the Final – now, you’re actually worse off winning the hardware.
Only a pair of teams since the 2004 NHL lockout have won both the Presidents’ Trophy and the Stanley Cup in the same season, the 2008 Detroit Red Wings and 2013 Chicago Blackhawks, and the latter was in a shortened lockout-season. Only one other team has even reached the Final, with the 2011 Vancouver Canucks winning the hardware before losing in Game 7 to the Boston Bruins.
In fact, a Presidents’ Trophy winner since the lockout has been ousted in the first round six times. The 2019 Tampa Bay Lightning and 2023 Bruins famously flamed out early despite both notching 128 points or more, and even this year’s Avalanche, despite reaching the conference final, looked outclassed in the four-game sweep.
It’s gotten to the point that teams fighting for top spots in the regular season hope their teams miss the Presidents’ Trophy, just because of the lack of success in the playoffs.
What is the reason for the change in the trophy’s status?
Well, for one thing, the styles of hockey from the regular season to the playoffs have diverged significantly in the last few decades.
A game in October features a lot of space and room for players to create offense, usually generating higher-scoring contests and little shot blocking and tight checking. By April, teams work on taking that space away, working hard to limit chances, and teams are much more content with low-scoring games than they were early in the season, with dozens of games to go. Several of the teams that flamed out in the postseason had high-powered offenses that sputtered once the games became tighter-checking, and couldn’t adapt to the change as well.
Another factor is the playoff format.
Since the adaptation of the current NHL playoff format in 2014, none of the Presidents’ Trophy winners have even gone past the conference final, and only 3 of the last 13 have even gotten past the second round. While the top-point getter is guaranteed home ice in the entire playoffs, the format locks in a tougher opponent if the winner isn’t a lone good team in the division.
In many cases, the winner has to face another of the NHL’s top teams in the second round, and 4 of the 13 teams ended up losing to the eventual Stanley Cup winner, all but one time in the second round. This creates an uneven path to a title and does not offer much of a reward other than home-ice advantage for the winner.
Another factor is that the pursuit of a points title can sap a team’s energy throughout the season to the point where the team isn’t rested for the postseason, most famously being the Bruins in 2023 chasing the NHL’s all-time points title, but bowing out to a Florida Panthers team in the first round who just snuck in to the playoffs. At some point, pushing the pedal to the metal over 82 games is a big use of a team’s energy, and it’s frequently why previous winners sometimes don’t try as hard for the points title in following seasons, knowing how it drains the tank for the marathon they really care about in spring.
If it’s any consolation for the Avalanche, it’s that 3 of the winners since 2014 eventually got their Stanley Cup, all within two seasons of winning the Presidents’ Trophy, and so eventually proved their mettle in the postseason after less productive regular seasons.
Certainly, though, the lack of success for the NHL’s top-point-getting team has been pretty remarkable the last dozen years, with the winner less likely than most lesser seeds to even reach the Cup final, let alone win a championship.
